News tagged with coastal waters

With summer around the corner, millions worldwide will head to pristine beaches and waterways. However, with items such as bottles, cans and other debris washing up on U.S. shores each year, the University of Georgia and ...

Coastal storms are known to cause serious damage along the shoreline, but they also cause significant disruption of the deep-sea ecosystem as well, according to a study of extreme coastal storms in the Western Mediterranean ...

The harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) is a whale species that is doing quite well in coastal and busy waters. They are found in large numbers throughout the Northern Hemisphere from Mauritania to Alaska, and now researchers ...

(Phys.org)—Man-made structures such as harbours, tourist facilities, oil rigs and aquaculture farms provide ideal sanctuaries for jellyfish polyps to flourish and may explain an apparent increase in jellyfish blooms in ...

University of Delaware researchers are using an underwater robot to find and follow sand tiger sharks that they previously tagged with transmitters. The innovative project is part of a multi-year partnership with Delaware ...

Among the worrisome environmental effects of global warming is the thawing of Arctic permafrost -- soil that normally remains at or below the freezing point for at least a two-year period and often much longer. Monitoring ...

Sandbar, dusky and tiger sharks are among dozens of shark species living in the coastal waters off the U.S. East Coast. Little is known about many of the species, but a survey begun nearly 25 years ago is helping scientists ...

When it rains, untreated stormwater can sweep pollutants into coastal waters, potentially endangering public health. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed low-cost filtration systems that are ...

Territorial waters

Territorial waters, or a territorial sea, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is a belt of coastal waters extending at most twelve nautical miles from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state, although foreign ships (both military and civilian) are allowed innocent passage through it; this sovereignty also extends to the airspace over and seabed below.

The term "territorial waters" is also sometimes used informally to describe any area of water over which a state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and potentially the continental shelf.